They set traps all around their cabin, with which they caught on an average a fox a day. They eat the flesh, and with the skins made caps and mittens. They had the good fortune to kill a bear nine feet long, from which they obtained one hundred pounds of lard. This they found useful, not as pomatum, but as the means of burning their lamp constantly, day and night, as if it were an altar and they the vestal virgins. On the 19th of December, they congratulated themselves that the Arctic night was just one-half expired; "for," says the narrative, "it was a terrible thing to be without the light of the sun, and deprived of the most excellent creature of God, which enliveneth the entire universe." On Christmas eve it snowed so violently that they could not open the door. The next day there was a white frost in the cabin. While seated at the fire and toasting their legs, their backs were frozen stiff. They did not know by the feeling that they were burning their shoes, and were only warned by the odor of the shrivelling leather. They put a strip of linen into the air, to see which way the wind was: in an instant the linen was frozen as hard as a board, and became, of course, perfectly useless as a weathercock. Then the men said to each other, "How excessively cold it must be out of doors!" The 5th of January was Twelfth Night, and the hut was buried under the snow. In the midst of their misery, they asked the captain's leave to celebrate the hallowed anniversary. With flour and oil they made pancakes, washing them down with wine saved from the day before and borrowed in advance from the morrow. They elected a king by lot, the master gunner being indicated by chance as the Lord of Nova Zembla. On the 8th, the twilight was observed to be slightly lengthening, and, though the cold increased with the returning sun, they bore it with cheerfulness. They noticed a tinge of red in the atmosphere, which spoke of the revival of nature. They visited the ship, and found the ice a foot high in the hold: they hardly expected ever to see her float again. The difficulty of obtaining fuel was now such, that many of the men thought it would be easier and shorter to lie down and die than make such dreadful efforts to prolong life. To save wood during the daytime, they played snow-ball, or ran, or wrestled, to keep up the circulation.